“The iPad will prove to be the most disruptive consumer product, ever, since the iPod,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes.

“(Note: Both created by Apple.) The iPad is not just a mere a stop along the spectrum between smartphone and laptop,” Travlos writes. “Rather, its particular combination of features – screen size, mobility, portability of the form factor, and Internet connectivity – propels the iPad in use cases, beyond any product previously.”

Travlos writes, “Here are eight reasons why the iPad, early yet in its product cycle, will serve as an ongoing catalyst for Apple over the next several years.”

• The iPad proved itself as an E-Commerce channel this Black Friday
• The iPad is an effective channel to promote products and to convert visitors to customers
• Tablets are the consumer electronic product of choice this Holiday Season, and iPad leads the list among those surveyed
• The iPad is the tablet of choice in China. (And that’s a big market.)
• The iPad is experiencing unprecedented adoption in the education market
• The iPad is being deployed across the enterprise market
• The iPad has the potential to dominate the tablet industry as the iPod still leads the MP3 market
• The iPad is profitable

Maybe you didn’t hear Bezos when he screamed that 2X as many Kindles were sold for the holidays this year than last year. That should have put some fear in your heart. It was definitely meant to put fear in Tim Cook’s heart. All those Kindle sales are stealing tablet market share from Apple at a prodigious rate. In fact, so much that the new price target for Amazon is about $314 a share. Amazon has far more upside than Apple despite the company losing money on every tablet sold. That’s how to run a business. You make it up in volume.

Yeah the same goes for: “The iPad is the tablet of choice in China.” well yes but missing the forest for the trees….
The iPad is the tablet of choice everywhere.

As has been said here so many times, by so many: There isn’t really a “tablet” market at all. There is only an iPad market and a couple wanna be’s, willing to make (poor) clones of the iPad and survive on the table scraps Apple drops.

1. iPad is a desktop replacement for many people and many applications (health, manufacturing, sales etc)
2. iPad is a notebook replacement for the same reasons
3. iPad leverages the Apple ecosystem
4. iPad employs many patented Apple technologies and Apple is vigorously defending its patents
5. iPad has both first-mover advantage and huge economies of scale which make it difficult, or impossible, for competitors to make money at the iPad pricepoint
6. iPad utilises Apple’s own processors which reduce Apple’s component costs, and allow Apple to set the performance/battery life benchmark
7. iPad has more apps and gets new apps first
8. iPad has more tablet specific apps giving iPad users a superior experience
9. iPad is available via the extensive Apple retail chain, along with excellent customer support for first time users
10. iPad has a large range of third party add-ons
11. iPad is available in 2 sizes
12. iPad is compatible with iPod touch and iPhone giving developers 4 platforms for every app and a huge installed base.

“7. iPad has more apps and gets new apps first
8. iPad has more tablet specific apps giving iPad users a superior experience”

You have good points but really 7 and 8 are key. No other Tablet has a library of tablet specific apps that are worthy of owning the tablet. The iPad is the ONLY tablet in existence with a useable library of tablet Apps. That alone will keep the iPad far ahead of the so-called “competition”.

Don’t be ridiculous. None of those things matter in the least, so don’t try to rationalize it with numbered points. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Wall Street easily knocks down all those iPad advantages and has given Apple an even more compressed P/E since the introduction of the iPad in 2010. That much can be easily verified.

All that seems to matter now is that the iPad is rapidly losing market share and is gradually being overwhelmed by a steady flood of cheap Android tablets just like the iPhone was overwhelmed by a few hundred million cheap Android smartphones. Apple is currently fighting a no-win market share situation against Android where it appears the highest percentage automatically wins.

I think that just about sums up everything and pretty much explains Apple’s current share price situation. I’m not making anything up because this is how it is. Any Apple shareholder should be able to see this much. Rationalizing why Apple should be winning doesn’t really change the situation.

Fragmentation galore. How do you fix an Android tablet that is beyond the product return date? Throw it away and buy another. How do you update an Android tablet operating system. Throw it away and buy one with a newer operating system and buy new apps since the old ones aren’t likely forward compatible. How do you get help. Find a geek willing to help a non geek or throw the Android away, go to the Apple store, buy an iPad and get help from the free classes or the Genius bar or view on line help videos.

Ah, yes, “the android tablets gaining, ipad sinks to 50%” meme. Next time you see these statistics, ask yourself, which of them came from legal filings required by law to be accurate and which of them came for “independent analysts” written for an undisclosed client list and using proprietary data collection techniques. Also, while the telcos subsidize phone and get spiffs for sales, they do so much less with tablet. Hence the comparison with phones is not really relevant.

Additional reasons are the iPad is simple to use. Many people who are intimidated by a PC, find the simplicity of the iPad appealing.
Success breeds success. As the iPad becomes more familiar and commonplace who wants to learn another operating system? One of the things which gives Facebook such longevity is not its fabulous interface. The interface frankly sucks, but so many people already use it, that the sheer numbers encourage others to use it. If a better interface came along, who would go there if their friends were already using Facebook. The same will be true of iPad only the platform not only has numbers of people, but the planform (unlike Facebook) doesn’t suck.

iPad, along with it’s cousins the phone and the pod, have taken Apple out of the market for customers, especially corporate and government customers, who are looking for real computers. The MacPro was on its way to dominating these markets when Steve decided to make Apple a mobile device company. Immediate profits and, until the recent collapse, explosive growth in the price of AAPL were the result. Long term, the iPad and its cousins could mean the end of Apple’s dominance as competitors respond to the demands of a totally schizophrenic customers who have absolutely no loyalty to any brand – they just want their gadgets to do the latest pop culture. That’s why you’ve seen the highest price AAPL will ever reach and one day the story will be the blunder of the century when Apple abandoned the potential for the biggest bonanza of the age.

So, workhorse desktop computers are the future of computing? In the third quarter of 2012, sales of p.c.’s were down 14% in the U.S. and 8% worldwide according to Business Insider. Portables are the new computers, and Apple owns the portable market both in laptops and tablets. Sure, desktop machines will always have their place, but for most people, an iPad can do all of the computing they need.

Except for the last one (“The iPad is profitable”), these are NOT “reasons” for iPad’s dominance; they are really the “outcomes” of iPad’s dominance.

And they are somewhat “low level.” I could probably come up with a dozen more such “reasons,” such as “The iPad is the tablet of choice in Japan” OR “The iPad is steadily stealing customers away from the huge Windows PC market.”

Here is the ONE key (and actual) REASON for iPad’s continued dominance. “The iPad has the best and largest library of apps.” That same reason is also a key reason for Windows previously being so dominant for a long time.

The Windows platform could point to the pure number and diversity of Windows programs as a key advantage over the Mac platform. And once someone became a Windows user, they established their library of programs, and it became progressively more difficult to dislodge them from their platform.

Then came the Internet and web browser. Web-based “apps” (web sites) neutralized the “app advantage” of Windows, because once users started to “live” in their web browser more and more, the computer’s OS (and app selection) no longer mattered. This change (plus the switch from PowerPC to Intel) allowed the Mac platform to gain in popularity; having more apps no longer mattered.

Then came iPhone and its App Store. On the very small screen, highly focused and efficient apps became important once again. iPhone users tend to access the Internet using apps, not the web browser. This new trend continued on, into iPad, and gave the first iPad an instant advantage.

When iPhone was released, there were no iOS apps (except the ones that Apple pre-installed) and the App Store did not open until Year Two. In contrast, when iPad was released, it instantly had the entire library of iOS apps for iPhone and a crowd of developers.

The iOS platform has the largest (by far) library of apps, and Apple’s advantage is even larger for tablet-optimized apps. Once an iPad user establishes their library of apps, it becomes progressively more difficult to dislodge them from their platform. As long as apps are a key part of the iPad user experience, and the iOS platform maintains app superiority, iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market.

Actually my nice new Surface could sleep with his sister – in it’s crashed state its totally mute and has no way of screaming for help – I can remove the wheels so it can’t skate off if that helps any….

“The iPad is profitable”
Of all the reasons, this is the one that caught my eye and I agree with.
Profits motivate. If Google or Amazon NEED to subsidize their tabs to get a foothold in the market, I guess that’s a good short term strategy, but if they continue to lose money on them, who would continue to throw money away like this? We’ll see. The bottom line will dictate.